As is known in the art, many microelectronic circuits, particularly circuits that include amplifiers on separated adjacent substrates sometimes require the installation of an attenuator, such as a broadband T-shaped attenuator at some point along the signal path between two amplifier substrates as shown in FIG. 1A. One type of attenuator, shown in FIGS. 1B-1D, is an attenuator module having a pair of series resistive elements, disposed on an upper surface of an attenuator module substrate, serially connected between an input pad and an output pad, and a shunt resistive element, also disposed on the upper surface of the substrate, connected between a junction between the pair of serially connected resistive elements and a shunt element pad. The shunt element pad is connected to an attenuator ground plane conductor disposed on the bottom surface of the attenuator substrate through a conductive via, as shown in FIG. 1C. The shunt element pad must be connected to the circuit ground plane conductor (which also serves as a DC ground connection) and therefore, the shunt elements pad, being connected to DC ground, must not be connected to the downstream signal path. Thus, when mounting the T-shaped attenuator to the signal line, in order to prevent the shunt resistive element from being connected to the input of the downstream amplifier and also to enable the shunt element pad to be connected to the circuit ground plane conductor, a gap is formed in the signal line where an attenuator is to be installed, as shown in FIG. 1A. Thus, a via is formed through the attenuator substrate in a region between the signal line under the attenuator to the underlying circuit ground plane conductor, as shown. This gap approach has, however, permanently changed the signal line thereby making difficult to go back and change the position of the gap along the signal line where the attenuator is to be re-installed in order to obtain optimal performance. This results in costly amplifier rework and often means the replaced amplifiers have to be handpicked to make sure the signal level is corrected. This can make a major impact on a production line.